SunGard HE Summit 2007

Vegas is the host of this year’s SunGard Higher Education’s Summit Conference. SunGard HE is the vendor for our student information system (Banner) and our student portal application (Luminis). I’m joined by 8,199 othe people comprised of SunGard HE staff, vendor partners and higher education customers from across the United States and numerous other countries.

I arrived Sunday afternoon and got checked in at the MGM Grand. Nice enough place but as I tell others, “Once you get in the room, most hotels aren’t that much different.” Of course that may have more to do with the rooms I reserve. After checking in and resting for a bit I headed off to the Mandalay Bay to register for the conference and meet some fellow PCC staff for dinner at the House of the Blues. The evening was a stroll down The Strip to check out the sites.

You’ll find some images of this stroll in the Summit gallery below as I can get them posted. I did a good job of bringing everything I needed with me, EXCEPT for my laptop’s power! I shouldn’t have any trouble borrowing power from others.

Monday brought the opening session for Summit with Vegas style entertainment and the required speech by the SunGard HE CEO. The entertainment was, well, entertaining and befitting Vegas. Scantily clad people doing things that people shouldn’t be able to do — this sounds worse than it was. Acrobatics and trapeze work.

This opening was then followed by a talk from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. This was a laugh-filled look at our often less-than-functional world. Scott recollected on a breakthrough in his life that came about once he realized that hard work in the corporate world does not correlate to rewards. This freed him up to focus less on work ‘success’ and more on life… and becoming a cartoonist. More inspirational perhaps was the perspective that people that consider themselves ‘lucky’ have no more true luck than anyone else, they are simply more expectant that good things will be there for them. I couldn’t agree more, it is hard to have a good life if you expect to be screwed everywhere you turn.

That’s all from now, off to a session.